After a few minutes Ri got up from her chair, she took a deep breath.
"Your first fight will be next week, as mentioned we don't have much time, you have to train as much as possible before then"
"First you have to understand how your power works, follow me."
She walked over to the wall behind her, touched the wall with the palm of her hand, and a hidden door opened.
We entered a small room with only two cots with some kind of helmets attached to machines.
"Lie down and put on your helmet"
She pointed to a bed, I did what he told me. She did the same on the other station.
"Start"
After a while, my mind was catapulted into another room, together with my body but in a "virtual" version.
"This is where I will train you personally, the advantage of having only you under my wing is that I can train myself in person ..."
"This is virtual reality, but what you learn here you can also use in the real world, this is certainly not where muscle mass develops, for that, you will have to use the gym, later I'll show you where it is ... well let's not waste any more time. "
She sprinted at me and hit me with a spinning kick and hit my right temple without hesitation.
"Ouch! What are you doing!?"
I didn't think you could feel pain in here.
"This is a simulator that reflects 100% reality, so you will feel pain, and that's good, the best way to develop skills is by risking your own safety, when your mind thinks more instinctively, the best fighter is the one who succeeds to create the perfect union between mind and instinct. "
"Ok, but at least warn me"
Without answering, Ri came back to me, starting a hook with her right arm, I tried to parry it, she lowered her torso by rotating her body using her right leg as a pivot and hit me with the heel of my foot left in the same place as before; this blow was even stronger than before, it threw me to the ground, my head was spinning, I got up after a few seconds, all staggering.
This slaughter continued for minutes, minutes turned into hours, and I felt very little improvement in myself.
"Nothing's changing…"
"Do you really think so? I am seeing improvements in you, it has been 10 minutes since I am no longer able to inflict a clean blow on you ... "
'Really?'
I was distracted just for a moment, she wrapped her legs around my head and threw me against a wall.
"AH!"
The pain I was feeling was becoming more and more unbearable.
"Ok, let's take a 10 minute break."
We were silent for 10 minutes, I was exhausted.
"Ok let's start over"
'What ?!'
"Already!?"
"As mentioned we have no time to waste."
We continued like this for hours.
"Well, come on, according to my calculations in two days you will be able to use your power, at least in part ..."
"W-how do you ... to say that ..."
I was exhausted.
"After a certain point you acted totally by instinct and for me it was more difficult to harm you, this means that you have a good instinct, maybe sometimes you even used your power without realizing it, in the next days I'm sure you will improve under the mental point of view, in order to make you more and more aware of what you do, this will make you aware of your power, at least hopefully, heh ... anyway ... have you ever done martial arts by chance? "
"Mmh? Actually, no. "
She smiled.
"So I really won the lottery with you."
We left the virtual world and her office, she wanted to show me the gym and then go back to my room.
"Ah, now that I think about it ... but how do we manage ... I mean, how do we understand each other when we talk?"
"Heh, have you ever seen a fictional movie? Try to guess?"
"Maybe, some kind of universal translator, or something like that ..."
"Exactly, the interesting thing is that this universal translator is not a machine or something like that, we have added a small part in your brain to do just that. "
'I hope this doesn't become a problem in the future.'
It was now 7 in the evening, Ri had just accompanied me to see the gym and then left me in front of my house, she also gave me other information on the bracelet she had given me.
In addition to information about me and my skills, it also acts as a credit card, the credit is written in the bottom left corner: 1000 PF coin (PFC); this money can be used both to eat in the various restaurants of the Arena and for the gym or other "experiences".
Ri also told me that for now my PFC increase per month would be 100, being that my PF is 10 *.
(* Number of PF given to new gladiators)
She also told me that the PF increase, in 1vs1 matches, is 2 to n, with n indicating the number of consecutive victories; for example if I had won three fights in a row my total increase would have been 14 points, thus reaching 24 PF. After two consecutive losses the winning streak (n) is zeroed, and if after these two losses you continue to lose the PF decrease will be 3 to k, with k indicating the number of consecutive losses.
Also, depending on your PF, your match-making was different. There is a subdivision of the general classification into tiers:
From -100 to 0: Acacia tier
From 0 to 100: Laurel tier
From 100 to 300: Magnolia tier
From 300 to 500: Ailanthus tier
From 500 to 1000: Hyperion tier
From 1000 onwards: legends tier, 1% of gladiators are found here.
My climb would have been really long, but getting there was my goal, or rather it would have been the first step to getting out of here.
'I think I'm not the only one in here with this goal and climbing the rankings could lead me to meet other strong ones with this goal, also the idea of climbing the rankings poked me a lot'
For now, I would like to memorize the layout of the whole arena, the turns of the gurdies, I would have to make trusted allies and my power would have been crucial.
'I got hungry'
I went to a bar to eat a sandwich and after an hour I went to work out in the gym.
[PFC 1000 -> PFC 980]
[PF 10]